As I continue my attempt to be more sensible and undeniably more boring by not letting myself indulge in needless car purchases, the same cannot be said about my husband. In the last year alone, Al’s number of drift cars has increased 200 per cent, and he now owns not one, but two Toyota Mark IIs, which joined his beloved Toyota Corolla AE86 – all red on bronze wheels. This makes ours a four Toyota household, if I count my Sera, which is, unquestionably, too many Toyotas for anyone to own. But, in his head, it makes perfect sense, so who am I to argue?
These were not the only additions to the garage, though. As a man of many talents, he divides his time equally between the static and kinetic disciplines of grip, both trying his best to go either sideways around a track or not end up on his side around a track. His weapon of choice for the latter has long been the same: his 2003 Porsche 996.2 GT3 Clubsport, a car he has owned for over 14 years during which time he has covered 60,000 miles in it.
Of these 60,000 miles, 45,000 have been exclusively going fast around a circuit, mostly the Nordschleife. Which was where, back in the early 2000s, a younger Al and his barely-holding-together Mazda MX-5 got overtaken by a then relatively new 996 GT3, and he heard the howl of the Mezger engine for the first time. It rattled him to his bones, so much so that he promised himself that one day he would come back to the same track in his own, which he eventually did. It helped that the 996 was still seen as the ugly duckling of the 911 family, due to the controversial ‘fried egg’ headlight styling and the fact that many people couldn’t tell it from a bog standard Carrera without their far-sighted glasses, so Al was able to purchase his 28,000-mile dream car for around £33,000.
